Wednesday, February 27, 2008

There seems to be an increased focus on the alarming Texas peyote situation. A couple of weeks ago the Houston Press published a mournful, in-depth article on the vanishing peyote populations and the implications to the Native American Church.

The inside of a peyote button tastes like a dirty raw potato, with a jalapeño backbite

The article features interviews with two (out of three remaining!) peyoteros, Mauro Morales and Salvador Johnson, describing their increasing problems in finding peyote due to root-plowing, over-collection and fencing of land for hunting.

"There's some medicine, right there," he [Mauro Morales] says. It's a lone peyote button, about an inch in diameter, way too small to harvest. It'll be another five years before this peyote is mature. As he navigates the hostile flora, he points to three more small peyote plants, all of them too young to cut.

"I used to collect as much in a week as I now do in a month," he says. "I don't know what's going to happen to the medicine."

Morales almost never utters the word "peyote." For him, the small green-gray cactus is a sacrament with miraculous healing powers, hence his word for it: ­medicine.

What makes peyote different from just about any other cactus in the world is that it naturally produces mescaline, a psychedelic alkaloid that can induce hallucinations lasting for days.

Cactus stickers and the occasional rattlesnake are all in a day's work for Mauro Morales when he goes hunting for peyote

Salvador Johnson used to be a full-time peyotero, but guiding hunting trips pays better these days

To protect against poachers getting in and deer getting out ranchers are increasingly fencing and patrolling their grounds. The ranchers' hands-off policy represents a dilemma for Martin Terry, the world's leading authority on peyote. On the one hand, protection against peyoteros will conserve the cactus. On the other, it prevents Indians from getting access to their sacred plant.

"From the point of view of the plant, the only threat is overharvesting," he says. "The fences and personnel that protect ranch lands from would-be harvesters are the very opposite of a threat, as the protected populations of peyote inside those fences are the only healthy ones in South Texas."

Still, Terry is sensitive to the peyoteros and their way of life. He considers Mauro Morales a personal friend. He wants to make sure that Indians have access to their cactus, but that's getting harder and harder.

The whole situation seems more and more like a gordian knot in dire need of a bold solution. The available natural peyote populations in Texas are over-harvested and not given time to replenish. At the same time many NAC members are opposed to cultivating the plant. One possible solution could be to import peyote from Mexico where the plants are still plentiful; but that might at the same time export the peyote conservation crises!

Saturday, January 19, 2008

In last month’s post on the troubled Texan peyoteros I referred to Anderson’s article on the peyote situation in Texas. Given the importance of this work, I saw it fit to bring it here in its full length - unfortunately I only have an old scan of the article, so the photos are a bit muddled but here goes...

More than a quarter of a million Native Americans use the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) (Fig. 1) as a sacrament in a Pan-Native American religion called the Native American Church. This bona fide religion includes Native Americans from throughout the United States and Canada. Almost all of the peyote consumed in their ceremonies comes from the "peyote gardens" on the Mustang Plains in south Texas, which has been carefully documented by Morgan (1976, 1983) and by Morgan and Stewart (1984). Federal and Texas laws permit the collecting and use of peyote by Native Americans in their religious ceremonies.

The origins of the Native American Church are complex, and the reader can refer to detailed accounts of how the modern peyote religion arose in the late nineteenth century through the influences of traditional Native American ceremonies and Christianity in both Mexico and the United States (Anderson, 1980; Stewart, 1989). This paper describes the long relationship of Hispanic "peyoteros" in south Texas and members of the Native American Church, as well as the impact of many years of collecting peyote tops or "buttons" within the Tamaulipan Thorn Shrub vegetation. Many report that the peyote populations are greatly diminished in size (Morgan and Stewart, 1984; Jerry Patchen, pers. comm.; Salvador Johnson, pers. comm.; Jackie Poole, pers. comm.). Is the continued collecting of the plant for religious purposes leading to a serious conservation problem? Will peyote continue to be available to Native Americans in the foreseeable future?

I recently had the opportunity to return to south Texas, where I had collected and studied peyote populations more than 30 years ago. I met Hispanic peyoteros, visited their drying sites, and talked with leaders of the Native American Church. I also examined a peyote site, where plants had reportedly been harvested about five years earlier.

Peyote has a broad distribution throughout most of northern Mexico and across the Rio Grande into Texas (Anderson, 1980). Though peyote occurs in west Texas near Big Bend National Park, the most extensive area within the U.S. is from the mouth of the Pecos River southward and eastward nearly to Brownsville. The main area in which peyote has been harvested commercially is within Starr, Jim Hogg, Webb, and Zapata counties, primarily along the western Bordas Escarpment, the Aguilares Plain, and the Breaks of the Rio Grande (Morgan and Stewart, 1984). Over 90% of this land is privately owned and well-fenced.

Hispanic peyoteros and some Native Americans have harvested peyote within this region for more than 100 years. Until the 1960's the main area for collecting the plant was in the more northern part, mostly in Webb County in the vicinity of Mirando City. In fact, the first peyoteros worked out of a small community just to the south of Mirando City called Los Ojuelos. Abandoned many years ago, the small town is now being rebuilt. Hispanic peyoteros and Native Americans developed a strong relationship, which has persisted to the present. The home of Amada Cardenas (Fig. 2), who is the oldest living peyotero, is located at the edge of Mirando City. It has become an important religious site for Native Americans who visit the area, with peyote meetings held in either a hogan or tipi. Amada, now 90 years old, was born in Los Ojuelos and became a peyotero in 1933. She is known to most Native Americans as "Mom"; often she provides Road Chiefs (church leaders) with especially fine specimens of peyote (Fig. 3) to serve as "Father Peyote" in the ceremonies they lead. Peyote growing in her garden is also highly revered (Fig. 4). She and the other peyoteros in the northern part of peyote country primarily sell dried peyote. More recently, peyoteros have operated in the more southern area around Rio Grande City; they deal mainly in fresh or "green" peyote, but dry some as well.

Fig. 3 - Especially large, fine peyote tops, which will be used as "Father Peyotes" in religious ceremonies of the Native American Church.

Fig. 4 - Peyote growing in the garden of Amada Cardenas. Note the coins and corn-husk cigarette butts that have been left as "offerings."

Peyoteros must be licensed by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the federal government, paying annual fees of $5 and $400, respectively (Salvador Johnson pers. comm.; Jerry Patchen, pers. comm.). They must keep accurate records of how many pieces of peyote they harvest and sell each year. Responsible peyoteros lease the rights to collect peyote from the land owners, a typical lease costing $800-1000 for permission to work on a small ranch for 30 days (Salvador Johnson, pers. comm.). Leases for ranches of several thousand acres would cost far more. Unfortunately, a few peyoteros fail to secure permission to collect on private land, thus causing land owners to become angry because of their trespassing. Illegal trespassing was a particularly bad problem in the 1960's and 1970's when non-Native American "hippies" or members of the drug cult came to south Texas to search for peyote. They would often camp illegally and have extended drug parties on private property. Their illegal trespassing, coupled with their association with more serious drugs, caused many ranchers to close their lands to everyone, including peyoteros and members of the Native American Church. These "hippies" have not returned in recent years.

Fig. 5 - Salvador Johnson, who has been a peyotero for more than 30 years, with drying peyote "buttons."

There are currently 11 peyoteros working in south Texas. Each harvests and sells about 200,000 tops a year (Salvador Johnson, pers. comm.). However, productivity varies from individual to individual, as well as the season of the year. For example, no one collects during Texas's hunting season, for it is far too dangerous to wander through the brush harvesting plants, with hunters searching through the thick brush for the numerous white-tailed deer. One peyotero, Salvador Johnson of Mirando City (Fig. 5), has been in the business for more than 30 years. He works throughout the northern region of the cactus's distribution in south Texas, an area of 200,000 to 300,000 acres, and collects more than 300,000 buttons or tops a year. He claims that he and four other workers can collect about 30,000 heads on 25 acres of land in about 5 hours — if the plants are abundant. It takes 10 days to dry the buttons (Fig. 6), for which he charges 15-17 cents a piece. The size of the buttons makes no difference with regard to price, for both state and federal laws are concerned only in the number of pieces collected and sold. Thus, Salvador is able to charge $ 150-170 per 1000 dried buttons, plus $5.00 per 1000 for shipping. The price for dried peyote has steadily risen. In 1966 the cost was $15 per 1000 buttons, but it had risen to $80 per 1000 by 1981 (Morgan and Stewart, 1984). Thus, the price has doubled in the last 10 years.

Fig. 6 - Freshly harvested peyote tops that are being dried for sale to Native Americans.

Anthony Davis, also known as White Thunder (Fig. 7), is an 83-year-old Pawnee Road Chief and President of The Native American Church of the United States in Texas. Anthony, a longtime member of the Church, says (pers. comm.) that the annual demand by all branches of the Native American Church in the U.S. and Canada for peyote "buttons" is 5-10 million. Unfortunately, the peyoteros of south Texas come far short of reaching this need. If they were to harvest that many tops, what would be the longterm effects on the natural populations? In fact, what is the impact of their present collecting of about two million tops each year?

I visited a population of peyote on Las Islas Ranch in northern Starr County. The ranch is presently closed to outsiders, including peyoteros, with numerous high fences and locked gates. The area we visited had never been root-plowed and consisted of natural vegetation (Fig. 8), with heavy stands of mesquite and other native shrubs. No peyoteros have been on the property in more than three years. I examined numerous plants and found about half had been previously harvested. The usual technique for harvesting is to use a flat, short-handled shovel or machete, which is carefully pushed just beneath the soil to sever the top of the plant from the tuberous root system. If the top is removed at ground level, regeneration is rapid, usually with one - or more - heads arising from the original root system (Figs. 9, 10). New tops will sprout in less than two months if the plant is in a state of active growth. The Las Islas site had many peyote plants with one or more small heads, most less than 5 centimeters (2 inches) in diameter. Several large individuals were found growing under large mesquite trees. Peyote seems to be remarkably resilient if proper harvesting techniques are practiced by peyoteros.

Fig. 10 - Soil removed to show that the tops arise from a large root system from which a top had been removed several years earlier.

What is the future of peyote harvesting in south Texas? The long-term prognosis, if present conditions continue to exist, is grim. Interestingly, the most serious threat to peyote is not its harvest by peyoteros. They are actually good conservationists and have a responsible approach to their livelihood. They want to carefully nurture the wild populations so that they will have a steady income. Members of the Native American Church, in turn, are dependent upon the peyoteros, for there is no other legal supply of their sacrament. Some will travel to south Texas to collect their own plants, but most cannot afford the time or expense.

The two most serious threats to a continued supply of peyote are root-plowing (Fig. 11) and the locking up of ranches to the peyoteros. These two activities by the land owners are understandable, because they want to make their land economically productive, as well as to protect themselves from lawsuits. The brushland has many snakes and other dangers, and in this time of litigation many owners fear the possibility of lawsuits if anyone is injured or killed on their property. Hunting has become a significant source of income for many ranchers, with groups of hunters paying for permission to be on the land during the winter hunting season. The property has therefore been closed in order to propagate game, prevent poaching, and insure that only those who have paid are on the property. Elaborate, high fences have been built to restrict the movement of deer.

In recent years ever-larger numbers of Native Americans are coming to visit the "peyote gardens," which are almost totally on private land that is fenced and posted. Some Native Americans resent being prohibited from visiting sites where their most important "medicine" grows, thus creating serious tensions between them and the ranchers.

Root-plowing is the only means whereby a land owner can prepare land for cattle grazing, after which various grasses are planted. Of course, native plants are virtually all destroyed, with the
exception of Opuntia engelmannii (Fig. 11). It multiplies rapidly by vegetative means once the ground is disturbed and in many places it forms nearly impenetrable thickets.

As more and more land is subjected to rootplows or is locked up, there is an ever-increasing pressure on those remaining populations of peyote that are legally accessible. An area of peyote should not be recut for at least five years, but often peyoteros cannot wait that long if the demand for buttons is great. Thus, smaller and smaller tops are harvested (Fig. 12) at ever-higher prices.

Fig. 12 - Very small peyote "buttons," indicating that peyoteros are being forced to harvest regenerated tops before they have grown to a sufficient size. Photos by author.

There appear to be three ways to alleviate the probable shortage of peyote within the near future. None is easy, and none may be possible.

First, efforts should be made to persuade ranch owners to allow peyoteros to legally have the right to harvest peyote on their property through leases or permits. Landowners of Texas feel strongly that their lands are private. Negotiations would be difficult, but if some ranchers would allow carefully supervised harvesting, then perhaps others would follow. Unfortunately, the image of peyote as a drug rather than a sacred medicine is hard to dispel. This is an unfortunate consequence of the drug culture and their coming to Texas to collect and consume peyote.

Second, negotiations could be initiated with the Mexican and U.S. governments to allow the importation of dried peyote from Mexico where the supply is still plentiful. This would provide income for Mexican harvesters, with U.S. Hispanics serving as importers and distributors. However, at present Mexico has laws which are even more restrictive regarding possession and use of peyote than in the U.S. Perhaps the new NAFTA treaty and the greater interest of both governments to work cooperatively may at least provide the possibility of discussions about peyote.

Third, salvage operations could be undertaken with the cooperation of ranchers who are rootplowing fields. If they could be pursuaded to allow peyoteros to collect entire peyote plants prior to their destruction by the plow, then those collected could be placed into cultivation. Suitable fields with security would have to be found, but such an activity would provide income to the rancher, to the harvester, and to the grower. The plant grows well in cultivation, though few peyoteros and Native Americans have been inclined to propagate other than small back yard gardens of peyote, thinking that the wild populations will never be depleted. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Peyote is not a dangerous drug that victimizes Native Americans as alcohol has done. Rather, it is a sacred plant having a history of use of more than 6000 years. It is only used ceremonially and as medicine. It is not addicting, nor does it cause harmful effects. It is one of the most important medicines to Native Americans. Their religion, in which peyote is used as the sacrament, is highly moral and serious. For anyone who has experienced the night-long ceremony of singing, praying, and mediating, there can be only respect and admiration. Serious efforts must be made to assure the continued supply of peyote for members of the Native American Church.

Acknowledgments
Financial support for this investigation was provided by the CSSA Research Fund. It is much appreciated. In addition, I wish to thank Dr. Stacy Schaefer of The University of Texas-Pan American for arranging travel, accommodations, and interviews in south Texas. I also want to thank Jerry Patchen for several valuable suggestions in the writing of this paper.

A recent Reuters article sums up the current grim situation for the Texan peyoteros and the “peyote gardens” they harvest. Today only 3 peyoteros are active in Texas, compared to as many as 27 peyote dealers being licensed in the 1970s; the 2006 harvest yielded 1.6 million peyote buttons - a dramatic decline from the mid-1990s peaks of around 2.3 million buttons.

Peyoteros are licensed by the government to harvest and sell peyote to members of the Native American Church - an occupation that seems oddly disconnected from the rest of the U.S. fighting its war on drugs for decades.

"There's still some peyote out there, but not like there used to be. It's getting kind of scary now," said Morales [one of the remaining peyoteros] above the crowing of a rooster from the roof of his shed.

He has had his peyotero license for 16 years, and before that worked as a picker, walking the arid brush country of southern Texas with a machete in hand and lopping off the top of the cactus when he found it.

It used to be easy -- peyote was plentiful and landowners were happy to let peyoteros harvest the cactus for a small fee.

But urban development and widespread "root plowing," which scrapes natural vegetation off the land to replace it with grass for cattle grazing, destroyed many of the peyote fields that once sprawled along the U.S.-Mexico border.

And more and more peyote land is off-limits because it is being bought by rich Texans who turn it into hunting preserves, said Martin Terry, a biology professor at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.

Consequently the available peyote populations are over-harvested, resulting in less peyote of an inferior quality. Terry suggests the US Drug Enforcement Administration to allow greenhouse cultivation of peyote as a solution to the current situation (tongue-in-cheek described as “a serious case of over-grazing by human herbivores” ;-). Cultivated peyote would secure ample supplies for the Native American Church and spare the remaining wild peyote populations.

It should be noted that Martin Terry is one of the few scientists currently conducting peyote related research, including investigations of proper peyote harvesting techniques.

You can read the full Reuters article, Texan deals peyote legally, here.

As an aside I have to mention that the Brisbane Times features the same article under the headline Growing psychedelic drugs aint what it used to be... a good illustration of the saying “everything is in the eye of the beholder” ;-)

Salvador Johnson is one of four licensed peyote distributors left in the United States. He has harvested the plant for 47 years.

MIRANDO CITY, Texas — In the heart of Rio Grande brush country, Salvador Johnson works a patch of land just east of the Mexican border that is sacred to Native Americans.

Spade in hand, eyes scanning the earth as he pushes through the spiny brush, Johnson searches the ground carefully. “This is good terrain for peyote,” he says. “There’s a low hill — the rain starts on top and goes down to water this — and there’s a lot of brown ground.”

He stops, points the tip of his shovel at a 3-inch spot of green that barely crests the soil under a clump of blackbrush and announces: “This is what you look for. You look for something that is not ordinary on the terrain. I saw that green.”

One of the last remaining “peyoteros,” Johnson, 58, has been harvesting the small round plant in and around this tiny community for 47 years — long before the hallucinogenic Lophophora williamsii cactus was classified as a narcotic and outlawed by federal and state governments. Then as now, it is for use by Native Americans as the main sacrament in their religious ceremonies.

Johnson is part of a nearly extinct trade of licensed peyote harvesters and distributors, at a time when the supply of the cactus and access to it is dwindling. The plant grows wild only in portions of four southern Texas counties and in the northern Mexico desert just across the Rio Grande.

But some Texas ranch owners have stopped leasing land to peyoteros and now offer their property to deer hunters or oil and gas companies for considerably higher profits. Others have plowed under peyote, and still others have never opened their land.

On the ranchland that is worked by peyoteros, conservationists are concerned about the overharvesting of immature plants as the Native American population and demand for the cactus grows.

“Will there be peyote for my children and my children’s children?” asked Adam Nez, 35, a Navajo who had driven 26 hours with his father-in-law from their reservation in Page, Ariz., to stock up on peyote at Johnson’s home.

That question and possible solutions to the problem — such as trying to legalize the importation of peyote from Mexico, and creating legal cultivation centers in the United States — are being studied by members of the Native American Church, Indian rights advocates and conservationists.

There are an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 members of the church in the United States. Although 90 percent of the peyote in North America grows in Mexico, the number of ceremonial users there — mostly Huichol Indians — is a small fraction of the number in the United States and Canada.

“In effect, you have a whole continent grazing on little pieces of south Texas,” said Martin Terry, a botany professor at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, who specializes in the study of peyote.

The church was incorporated in 1918 in Oklahoma to protect the religious use of peyote by indigenous Americans. Its charter was eventually expanded to other states, and in 1965, a federal regulation was approved to protect the ceremonial use of peyote by Indians. In 1978, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

But subsequent conflicts between federal policy and state drug laws precipitated the passage of a federal law in 1994 to guarantee the legal use, possession and transportation of peyote “by an Indian for bona fide traditional ceremonial purposes in connection with the practice of a traditional Indian religion.”

The law extends protection against prosecution for the possession and use of peyote only to members of federally recognized tribes.

“Over the last 40 years, there have been lots of equal-protection defenses to criminal prosecution thrown up, with people saying ‘my use of this controlled substance is religiously derived,’ ” said Steve Moore, a senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund.

Though not considered addictive, peyote is included in the Drug Enforcement Agency’s list of Schedule I controlled substances along with heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana and methaqualone.

Although the DEA acknowledges the importance of the hallucinogenic cactus to the religious rites of Native American peyote users, the agency says the drug has a high potential for abuse and has no accepted medicinal purpose in the United States.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has licensed peyote distributors since the mid-1970s, when the number in the state peaked at 27. It dwindled to four last year. State records show that only three distributors have harvested and sold peyote so far this year.

For the past five years, an average of almost 1.9 million peyote buttons have been sold annually, according to state records.

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Information on the peyote cactus et cetera. The primary focus of the Lophophora Blog is small Mexican cactus species like Lophophora (peyote), Obregonia (artichoke cactus), Acharagma, Ariocarpus (living rock), and Strombocactus but occasionally other subjects will be dealt with as well. Welcome to the Lophoforum and happy growing :-)